I didn't hack into the bank and perform a wire-transfer of millions of dollars out of IRS accounts into offshore holding accounts. I was performing a citizen's arrest on the funds for the illegal asset-forfeiture seizures they supported.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Transportation Security Administration announces its recent partnership with the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning in time for the Christmas travel season, the Vatican will supply additional staff to perform pat-down searches and monitor the full-body scanners.

A small but vocal minority of fliers have expressed concern regarding the program. TSA spokesman Dick Tickle dismisses the opposition as an aggrieved minority, stating that the financial savings and increased security benefit taxpayers and travellers alike.

"My co-workers and I are uncomfortable with the intimate nature of the pat-down searches required for those who opt out of the full-body scannings," notes TSA agent Willie G. Roper. "The priests don't seem to object, the people trust them, and they reportedly bring years of experience with them."

Father John Geoghan eagerly looks forward to helping secure America's transportation network. "I've seen the images produced by the backscatter/millimeter-wave systems, and there's no hiding anything."

Given the expected success of the new program, Tickle hints that the agency plans to extend its subcontracting relationships, starting with state correctional institutions. "A number of parolees and work-release prisoners have a difficult time finding jobs because of their record. In some cases, their names will appear on the sex-offender registry for the rest of their life. We offer them hope at reintegrating into society while making travel safer."

Was actually disappointed when it didn't involve the ISP throttling the troll's connection to the internet using some sort of bandwidth-shaping or destination blocking. I mean, blocking access to google (that den of copyright infringement!) would certainly slow down searches for infringement. 😉

to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.—United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8

Copyright is just an attempt at a means to advance "Science and useful Arts".

There is no way for anyone to know if any speech is "NOT the first step in doing something really bad."

Oh, I know of at least one phrase that nigh guarantees subsequent malfeasance. “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Just making sure that your router logged *all* WAN traffic, not just HTTP/HTTPS. A 70GB discrepancy is still a HUGE difference and would be hard to reach on DNS/NTP-queries (or other common UDP traffic) alone, but I could see it being from IMAP/POP/SMTP or SSH/BitTorrent traffic.

Or maybe Comcast is injecting 70GB of super-cookies in your HTTP(non-S) traffic and billing you for the privilege. 😉

Options include accepting the spoliation of evidence as collateral damage for the illegal search; coming up with a Faraday-bag style isolation like you describe; or being willing to accept that a remote wipe is a possibility. If the phone's owner has been arrested, it's less likely that they have capabilities to execute a remote wipe, but it's a possibility.

However, it's possible to force either the potential spoliation-of-battery-case-evidence or device-gets-wiped situation by writing some sort of "wake every 30 minutes and check if my owner has entered their pass-code at any time in the last 24hr, and if not, wipe myself" program.

If you're going to bring a bomb to school in TX, make sure that it looks like some professionally made football equipment, not like a tinkerer's project. Because this is TX where football goes unquestioned (unlike all that sciency-math-inventor stuff).